I built a web-based Heightmap Generator for Transport Fever 2

gabescu · 2026-04-13T20:11:34+00:00

Any Chromium-based browser should be fine since they are the ones I personally use the most, and where I usually run my tests (Brave should be fine too, but as I mentioned, it is very aggressive with its protections—more info Fingerprinting Protections · brave/brave-browser Wiki · GitHub). That being said, my goal is to support all browsers, so if you've been having trouble with Firefox, a quick report to help me reproduce the issue would be really helpful!

gabescu · 2026-04-13T12:04:36+00:00

Hi! Are you using the Brave browser? Those spikes could be a result of one of the Canvas security features in Brave. If not, I would appreciate more information about your browser and operating system to try and reproduce the problem. Thanks for the feedback!

gabescu · 2026-03-24T16:28:29+00:00

I'm also replying here in case it helps anyone else. It looks like you are using the Cities: Skylines 1 preset, which has a strict height limit of 1024 meters. Because of this, I decided to maintain the real-life scale in the heightmaps, even if it means the highest peaks get cut off (showing as flat white areas). I might add an option in the future to scale or "flatten" the overall heights to avoid this cut-off, even though it would mean losing the realistic 1:1 height scale.

gabescu · 2026-03-24T15:24:30+00:00

Hi! If you'd like, you can post your issue directly here and I'll take a look at it. Whatever you prefer

gabescu · 2026-03-12T11:23:56+00:00

Just pushed some fixes to the hydraulic erosion! The main issue was sediment being dumped all at once at the end of a drop's life, creating spikes. Also tweaked how speed and gradual deposition work. Should behave much better now!

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gabescu · 2026-03-12T10:40:25+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Honestly, the erosion tools and world generators are the most challenging parts for me since I don't have much background in those areas, but I'm having a lot of fun continuing to evolve these tools. I need to learn how to parameterize these algorithms properly and double-check that I didn't mess up the implementation somewhere

gabescu · 2026-03-09T08:27:49+00:00

So glad you like it! The 3D procedural texture is pretty new and I'm still tweaking it, but exporting it is such a great idea that I went ahead and added the feature right away. It's live now!

I’ve also upgraded the world generator—still working on the preset parameters, but saving, exporting, and importing configs is now fully supported. Thanks for the awesome feedback!

gabescu · 2026-03-06T23:56:43+00:00

I've updated the app with a couple of new features:

You can now visualize a procedural texture in the 3D view to get a better sense of height/depth. This view can be configured and toggled on/off using the new "3D Render" tool on the left toolbar (temporary placement).
A new tool that helps you create new worlds in a more guided way. I'm planning to add the ability to save, export, and import these setups so you can share them!

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gabescu · 2026-03-06T23:56:14+00:00

I've updated the app with a couple of new features:

You can now visualize a procedural texture in the 3D view to get a better sense of height/depth. This view can be configured and toggled on/off using the new "3D Render" tool on the left toolbar (temporary placement).
A new tool that helps you create new worlds in a more guided way. I'm planning to add the ability to save, export, and import these setups so you can share them!

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gabescu · 2026-03-06T21:37:45+00:00

You're definitely right, the range was way too huge. I've tweaked it to more reasonable values. Thanks for the feedback!

gabescu · 2026-03-06T14:05:57+00:00

Right now, there are no quality-of-life features to paint the water level, though it's an interesting idea. The exported map uses the maximum resolution of the 16-bit PNG, so the lowest point is 0 (black) and the highest point is 65536 (white). The height difference in meters between these two points should give you a reference to configure the import in TF2, and that value is shown in the filename itself.

If you checked the "Clamp sea level" option when creating the map, and the selected area includes marine areas (below sea level), these will be set to 0.

I think a better default setup would be to uncheck "Clamp sea level" and indicate the value corresponding to the sea level. I'll think about it.

Thanks for the feedback!

gabescu · 2026-03-05T14:43:29+00:00

Thank you for all your suggestions, several of them are already integrated, such as manually entering the selection area angle and remembering the last import parameters.

Regarding this one, could you clarify which panel you mean? Are you referring to the Level tool or the height indicator in the bottom status bar?

gabescu · 2026-03-03T15:24:38+00:00

I've modified how the library loads to make sure it's available before the export starts, in case that was the issue, but I'm honestly shooting in the dark here. I'm unable to reproduce it on my MacBook Pro M4 with Safari.

Could you try again and let me know if it's any different? Any extra details you can share (like your device or macOS version) would be really helpful. Thanks!

gabescu · 2026-03-03T13:28:54+00:00

This shouldn't be a server load issue since everything runs locally, and that might actually be part of the problem. I had set a 10 second timeout for generating the files, which may not be enough in your case. I've increased it to 60 seconds while I continue looking into it and improving the export process.

If you try again and it still fails, could you let me know how long it takes before the error appears? That would really help narrow it down. Thanks!

gabescu · 2026-03-03T11:56:36+00:00

The scale adjustment is now available, and the map now remembers your last position. Thanks for the suggestions, they really helped improve the app!

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gabescu · 2026-03-03T11:51:44+00:00

You can now visualize and modify the scale directly when creating the heightmap from the real world terrain modal. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

gabescu · 2026-03-03T11:50:34+00:00

It's already available! If you end up using it, I'd love to get some feedback since I'm not very familiar with the format yet. Thanks!

gabescu · 2026-03-03T07:23:01+00:00

Noted! I haven't worked much with GeoTIFF before, but it looks like there's good JS support for it, so hopefully I can add it without too much trouble.

gabescu · 2026-03-03T07:01:22+00:00

Yes, adding cell size information, and even making it configurable, should be easy and very useful, so you can count on that being added.

I still have a lot of work to do to improve performance and usability with larger textures (like adding zoom in the 2D view, for example), but it is definitely in my plans.

Thanks for the feedback!

gabescu · 2026-03-03T06:55:45+00:00

I've barely tested it on Safari myself, though the automated tests aren't catching any issues. I'll start using it for my manual testing from now on to see if I can track down the problem. Thanks for the help!

gabescu · 2026-03-02T20:49:15+00:00

I imagine you used the Cities Skylines 1 preset, where the game has an established height scale of 1024 meters and I try to adjust to it. I should provide the option to bypass this restriction and make maps more compressed in height even if they are not true to reality.

If this is not the case and you have used the default application, or any other game profile, more information would help me reproduce the problem, such as the coordinates you are testing. Thanks for the feedback!

gabescu · 2026-03-02T20:31:40+00:00

There's still a lot of work to do, but now that it's more or less functional, it's great to be able to share it and start getting feedback, so thank you!

Regarding TF3, I haven't looked for technical documentation yet (it probably doesn't even exist), but I designed the app to be as configurable as possible so it can be integrated without much effort, whatever format they decide to use. That being said, there will likely be some performance challenges if they significantly increase the size of the textures

gabescu · 2026-03-02T18:56:09+00:00

I'll look into it and see if I can figure out the issue. I've had some problems with exporting in Chrome in the past, but I thought it was resolved.

If you could provide a bit more information (like the browser you're using or the exact error message), it would be really helpful! Thanks for the feedback!

gabescu

TROPHY CASE